… to solve the mystery of the clean-looking crane on the dockside.
As it happens, I mentioned yesterday that the name of the manufacturer had been painted out . But today, it’s been painted back in again. Therefore the conclusion that we can draw from this is that it is the old crane that was there, currently undergoing a renovation programme.
We’ll probably see a bit more of the signage painted back in over the nexr few days
But there has been a big change at the quayside today as well. One of the shrink-wrapped speedboats and a pile of freight has disappeared. Presumably one of the little Jersey freighters came in on the morning tide to whisk it away.
But while we’re on the subject of the morning … “well, one of us is” – ed … I’m not going to talk about this morning as you don’t want to hear about it. In fact I didn’t even make any effort to beat any of the alarms this morning.
It took quite a while to make a start as well today and that was extremely depressing. It seems to me that I’m drifting back into how I was in 2003/2004 and I really can’t go through this again.
Somehow I managed to find some enthusiasm to have a play on the guitar. Not very much but it was the first time since I’ve been back from Leuven.
And talking of Leuven, I ‘m beginning to come round to the feeling that my weekend in Paris was the wrong decision. Sleeping dogs are best left to lie and as I remember saying a good few weeks ago when we were talking about snowstorms in Ottawa, it’s wrong to go raking around in the embers of fires that were extinguished a long time ago.
Rosemary was on the phone again this afternoon. It seems that her refugees from Ukraine are now no longer coming. She’s now pondering over how best to proceed now.
That took me up to the time to go for my afternoon walk.
And if you are thinking that this afternoon’s photo of people down there on the beach is taken from a different perspective or viewpoint, the fact is that this afternoon I went for a walk around the walls instead of around the headland.
It was another lovely day this afternoon so it was rather a surprise to see so few people down there this afternoon. I was in a tee-shirt again this afternoon and I’d left the window in the living room open last night.
Sumer is acumen in. Lhude sing cucu.
One of the things that I wanted to do was to look at the repairs to the medieval city wall and see how they were progressing.
They have erected the scaffolding all around the medieval water closet and it looks as if they are having a good go at that right now.
They have also raked out all of the decaying mortar from the joints in between the stones in the wall so it looks as if they are going to be repointing all of that as well.
It doesn’t look though as if they are using any ballast to weigh down the scaffolding while it’s in position there. I have to say that I admire their confidence in this respect.
While I was here I nipped down the steps to have a look to see what was happening on the outside of the wall just here.
As I was looking at the wall I fell in with one of the workmen here. We had a good chat about the work. I told him about the work that I’d done on the stone wall of my house in the Auvergne and he told me that he reckoned they will still be here this time next year doing this.
So having exchanged pleasantries, I climbed back up to the path (which wasn’t easy) and then carried on my way along the path underneath the walls towards the Plat Gousset.
Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other day we noticed that the changing cabins had arrived on the Plat Gousset.
That usually means that the town is preparing for the summer season so I was expecting to see the diving platform installed on top of the concrete pillar. But that’s not here yet. They are taking their time with that.
But as far as the outdoor tidal swimming pool goes, I’m told that that they have been working on that today and they will finish of off tomorrow morning ready for the weekend.
You can also see the yellow buoys that mark the area of the beach that is patrolled by lifeguards.
From the viewpoint overlooking the beach I walked around the corner to the viewpoint overlooking the Plat Gousset.
Once again, despite the nice weather, there weren’t all that many people down there either. It’s a Wednesday afternoon with schools on a half-day closing too so there should be many more people down there than that.
From there I walked off across the Square Maurice Marland that’s looking rather sad these days, especially when you consider all of the money they spent on it a couple of years ago.
On the way past I had a good look at the crane, a photo of which you all saw earlier.
Something else that caught my eye was all of the nests on the roofs in the Rue des Juifs.
The seagulls are settling down on top of their eggs waiting for them to hatch and I don’t imagine that it it will be too long before we have our fist sight of a few little chicks.
From here I went straight home. I was in no mood to go for a wander around. I bumped into one of my neighbours again and we had a chat for a couple of minutes and then I came home where there was a nice hot coffee waiting for me.
Later on I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. There had been some refugee children come from Central Scotland. I’d been organising things, fetching them over, finding them accommodation, sending them there etc. There was one girl who was really nice. Everyone fell in love with her and that was no surprise because she was lovely. I don’t kow how this happened but one morning she was staying in bed at a home where there was another girl and someone else. I had to go and awaken the three of them. They were all being a bit cheeky so in the end I picked up all 3 of them at once and carried them downstairs all in my arms, the three of them. One of them, the English girl, had a driving lesson so I had to organise the car for her. There was much more to it than this of course but I can’t remember any more than that
There were 3 of us in north London in the early 60s. 2 were local boys and one was the son of West Indian immigrants who used to hang around together. This is the story of growing up and dating etc, students and driving down to cafés on the North Circular Road and the A1. In the end I was parked up on an old abandoned section of the A1 reading a book. Crowds of people were going past on their way for a Saturday night somewhere in the town. I was reading my book not really interested in what the others were doing at all. I was quite happy about that. There were some statistics about costs of house repair etc between prices of what you’d pay corporations to do work and what you’d pay the little people to do work. The little people’s prices were surprisingly significant whereas if it was a multi-million pound company to do the work you were probably paying twice as much for the same job. This cut-off was strange because it was all full of cut-down trees and I’d backed my car in among them so people walking past didn’t really see me until the last minute and it took them by surprise that I was there.
Later on I was in Crewe again taxiing. It was Christmas Eve and we were really busy. We had 2 cars working, me and someone else. There was a job from Crewe that we had to go to MacDonalds in Wrexham and if they didn’t have what we wanted we had to go to MacDonalds in Stockport and then come back. I reckoned that it would take about 2 hours to do that round trip. The driver didn’t think so but I was sure that that was what it would take. Anyway we packed him off and I carried on working. I ended up in Earle Street on a bicycle. There were crowds of motor bikers and cyclists around. The police had a barrage across the road and were checking people’s motorbikes for something or other. Some of them were glowing blue as if it was an explosives detector or something like that. I tried to find a policeman to ask but they were all far too busy to talk to me. Some passer-by pointed out a derailleur gear. He asked me about derailleur gears and I thought that it was Swiss but I’d be surprised if it was that that was the problem but he thought that it was. These bikers had huge piles of rocks at their disposal and it looked as if they were going to launch a hail of rocks on someone or something at some particular time and that’s why the police were there
There was more to it than this but you really don’t want to know about it, especially if you’re eating your meal right now
Tea tonight was a curry made with the leftovers in the fridge. And it was delicious too. Quite a good one. And now I’m off to bed, especially as I have a headache right now. Here’s hoping that I have a better day tomorrow for a change.